Monday, 5 December 2011

By now, you may have seen the BBC Sound of 2012 longlist which is described by the head of BBC Music as "a project now established as the definitive annual list of exciting new artists to watch out for". What a load of complete and utter pish! For the most part, it's represents a victory for the PR machine over actual, unsigned talent, which the country has in abundance, and serves only to further hype bands and musical genres tailor-made for, what I'd like to call, the 'Tulisa Generation' (I dislike her!). Now, as a Scottish music blogger who tries to do his bit for unsigned bands up and down the country, I'm obviously a wee bit peeved at the lack of bands which fit that bill. But am I surprised?

Am I buggery! Let's look at their past form. The Bravery triumphing over The Dears (did they listen to the rest of their debut album or base their decision purely on the one song that was around at the time??), Mika pipping the likes of Cold War Kids (seriously now...), and Ellie Goulding and Jessie J beating, well... anyone really! And I've not even gotten to the shortlisting of Joe Lean And The Jing Jang Jong yet! Is it anything other than latching on to the most (over)hyped and in most cases, trendy, artists and putting them on the fast-track to success (not so much with The Bravery, but then again, it would've taken a damn site more than that to make them household names)? So the latest list comes as no surprise at all.

So with this in mind, a while back, some of the crème de la crème of UK bloggers got together to nominate some of our own picks for musical stardom in 2012. The idea (devised by Andy from The VPME and a few others) behind The Blog Sound of 2012 is in part, an experiment to see how a list from music bloggers all over the UK would compare to that devised by the BBC's own team. And I'm sure, in part, dismay at some of their previous choices.

It's maybe best to mention here that these expressed views are mine alone and not necessarily those of the other participants or The Blog Sound of 2012 as a whole... please invite me back next year!

Anyway, here's our longlist, which I'm glad to say contains a few of my five nominations. Can you tell which ones!?

So that's that then. Great to see French Wives and Meursault in there. Only two bands have made both longlists. I know which list I'm more likely to throw my weight behind. Saying that though, I know which one I'd put my house on too... and they're not necessarily the same ones! I'll let you draw your own conclusions...